Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
Once upon a time, Twitter — now X — was the place to get your memes, world news, and pop culture. However, even at the time, being an active Twitter user also required sifting through a daily deluge of toxic characters, bots, and deepfakes. Then the Elon Musk circus came to town and began steadily altering the formerly popular social network, to the point that many of its adherents began bailing by moving to one or more of the new social networks, such as Threads, Bluesky, or Mastodon.
